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If you haven't heard about this yet, a quick search engine run will uncover -- a lot. In fact, the amount being turned up is increasing by the minute. The complete Kitchen Nightmares episode may still be on YouTube, and you might want to consider watching it as a reference point once you see the articles.

Public (and Internet) breakdowns.

Multiple violations of the law.

Multiple summonings of the law.

Public relations people running away at top speed.

Lawsuits which never quite manifest.

Customers threatened with arrest for walking out on food they never received.

A co-owner who's been banned from two countries.

Money laundering accusations (those are new).

And more insanity than you can shake a frying pan at.

Poor Gordon. Who knew the show's name was finally going to turn prophetic?

I say it at least once a season after seeing what the HK casting director stuck him with this time. I swear they're trying to break him. And they keep getting closer to making it.

But this -- KN (the stateside version) likes to cast dysfunctional owners so the audience can have the 'fun' of trying to figure out how the place stayed open that long to begin with. You get used to it after a while. But growing numb to a suddenly-normal level of insanity means the casting department will keep pushing for the boundaries. And they finally crossed the border.

We've talked about lack of vetting for competition shows. We have now reached the point where drop-ins require an Interpol check.

But they have been on top of the story to the point where their own short thread and posted links form one of the more accurate accounts I've seen so far. I hadn't known about Amy's jail time for identity fraud until I checked their most recent updates.

Start in the middle of the page. Note that they did capture some of Amy's online rants.

I mean usually the people on this show are dysfunctional or incompetent, but at least have some desire to make things work buried under all that. But these people.

I really think they expected Gordon, whose job it is on the show to find everything that isn't working and fix it, to show up and proclaim them perfect in every way and so amazing he would hand over all his Michelin stars to them.

Watch her take that out of context should they go looking for investors. She was in Forbes, y'know. Do the people with cash need to know what the article was actually about? Nope.

By the way, it turns out they are in violation of Arizona law: it's illegal to confiscate a server's tips. There's actually a petition up on change.org, asking the Department Of Labor to go after them on this.

The difference is that the place in Nashville gave the pretense of going along with the changes until he left - Amy/Samy were openly hostile at the slightest suggestion there was anything wrong and they were openly stealing from their employees. Plus there's that Internet sparring that took this to a much bigger level beyond anything than the Nashville folks did. If Amy/Samy shut up and didn't engage anyone online, we'd have forgotten all about that episode by now.

But apparently if you call the waitstaff bussers and runners and they don't really take orders, except when they do, and they con't communicate with the wife in the kitchen because no one can figure out how to talk to Amy but her husband...

they aren't supposed to get the tips anyway.

The only waitstaff is the husband.

Now if they aren't lying...o_0...they pay above minimum wage and so they may be skirting the law as the reason waitstaff gets tips is they don't get paid by the business but get some of their wages from the customers directly so they don't need minimum wage.

But...

Waitstaff in union restaurants, as few as they are, that make a lot more per hour than most servers get tips and get to keep them.

Amen! The tip goes to the person who took my order, brought me my food and brought me stuff if I asked for it. Why would I tip the crazy guy standing behind a counter keeping his equally crazy wife happy?

Get that to one of the Internet shirt-printing companies now and get your stamp on it before anyone steals it. That's not a million-dollar idea, but if you move fast enough, I can see you clearing a thousand dollars before the craze wears off.

That did it, I now have to clean the screen. Thanks it was totally your fault that I laughed. Fish & Fooner, a screen spraying in two posts. I'm going to blog, tweet and get my hair done for my Forbes shoot.

That is definitely the thought of an entrepreneur. The prospect of seeing how horrifying an experience you can actually have at a restaurant is now the pull for going out of your way to dine at Amy's.They had a similar themed restaurant in SanFran when I was growing up there.You went because the servers called you degenrates upon greeting. When taking your order they would OFTEN change your mind for you, or decide what you're going to eat for you. Your food, when it came, was presented with your server's thumb planted within. They would pull their thumb out, suck it and claim "yup, that's warm enough for the baby". Etc.They would even belittle customers for not spending enough money to be there.People ate it up. Lines out the door and down the street.Literally throwing money at the owners and running out crying. LIT.ER.AL.LY.

NEW Amy's Tagline: "You don't like it?! Then don't phvcking eat here! I dare you! You phvcking pv55ies! I dare you to NOT eat here. I'll kick you out if you try. You stupid pice of cheet."

They will be coming in droves donating millions to these people for years.

Never had a restaurant that I know of like that over here, but you bring back fond memories of a Chinese restaurant on Wardour Street called Wong Keiís (pronounced ďwonkyísĒ)

Rude waiters, very loud, if you asked for a fork or spoon you needed to have the catching skills of Jonty Rhodes as they chucked it at you, I remember once when I was eating alone on the ground floor that they threw someone out for asking for a menu, but the food was very fresh, very cheap and well above par, when I used to go, back in the mid '90s I would have a big bowl of Wonton noodle soup and a big bowl of congee or beef in black bean sauce with ho fun, or roast duck with egg fried rice for under a fiver, not bad at all, and I couldn't eat for the rest of the day!

Happy memories!

OTOH Fawlty Towers was apparently based on a real hotelier

Maybe I am used to Hong Kong style Chinese food (despite all of these restaurants promising me that they are cooking Szechuan or Peking) but I have never really got on with Chinese food outside of UK/NL it always tastes very odd to me.

Hard to know if the food is a different region of China or you are just eating Chinese food adapted for UK tastes. They do seem to adapt their food and flavors to local tastes. After all some of the things we think are Chinese food here are American inventions in a Chinese style that we like to eat so they all cook it for us. I've noticed Chinese food varies from region to region in the USA. More deep fried stuff with hot sauce in the south than I ever saw in the Midwest.

I waited until April 2nd hit so there would be a chance you'd believe me.

I understand being this desperate for ratings. I can even believe they're this desperate for attention, stupid enough to believe it'll all work out this time, and no more capable of seeing it coming. I'm just not sure how they're still open...

Absolutely will be recording this (going out of town that weekend)! We need to create a drinking game for this show - catch words like "that little..." or "haters" or "Yelpers" or the number of eye rolls every time Gordon addresses Amy directly. We also need to set an over/under on the number of times Samy threatens to insert his fist up a customer's azz.

Two hours? I'll set the over/under number of deaths at 3,000 from the drinking game.

Yeah there were some rumblings that it had to do with a court action at the time, but I haven't heard anything further about this.

But, interestingly, the February original date was for 1 hour (had it set up on my PVR) but this new date is for two hours. Looks like they had some fresh new material to work with and decided to stretch it out over an extra hour.

And? A Kitchen Nightmares drinking game with a bonus Amy's Baking Co. section. Not enough, and I fully expect a bona fide drinking game rubric to come out by the time the episode airs next week.

I had heard that this had been cancelled and ABC pulled out. Is it back on the docket?

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

You think a reality show contract allows participants to decide what airs? Really?

As far as I can tell, it's still on. It looks like the episode was filmed at the end of January -- shortly after Samy accused Gordon of sexually harassing Amy. Oh, and he now claims he threw Gordon out the first time. He's very proud to have shut down production.

(I found that on Newsmax. I have to shoot my computer now.)

Also, the ABC employee contract came out. The one with a $250 fine for not working a surprise weekend shift. Pay the bosses. And when they fire you, you're not allowed to take another food service job in a fifty-mile radius. Not that you worked in food service with them. Now hand over your tips.

And there are now I Survived Amy's Baking Company t-shirts. They make them.

This has been asked before, so by now it's largely rhetorical. But itís still an enigma. To me.

Just how do they stay in business? Are notoriety, lying, assaulting customers, bad food, and slave driving the staff really the ingredients of a successful business model?

Is appearing on national TV to demonstrate just how bad a restaurant what it takes?

Can they possibly be catering to the actual tastes of people in Scottsdale?

My mother was an entertainment columnist for a local newspaper where I grew up, and would write reviews on local restaurants. She visited one place and wrote a gently negative review (she was a gentle person), and the place closed within two months. She assumed (probably correctly) that her review contributed to their failure, and she felt very bad about that. I mean, if you write an honest review you have to stick to your guns, but still, she felt bad.

So, if in the real world all it takes to kill a restaurant's business is a bad review in a local podunk rag, how do Amy and Semy manage to stay open with their sins exposed for the world to see?

Self-delusion and rewriting history might be why they would entertain the notion of inviting Gordon back, or appearing on Dr. Phil. but they canít be why they are still in business.

BTW, my money is on them walking off the set during the Dr. Phil interview. And how about the ratings for the Judge Judy show if she could get them in her court? You donít lie to Judge Judy, no sir! Maíam!

You know, if they really want to make a million that would be how to do it.

Teach the sane and competent how to game the system to get that kind of success.

I'm sure there is some banker that is somehow got things rigged up so they make a ton of money by pouring untold wealth into some business that should never be able to stay open. Probably need to have insane business owners because anyone sane would close up shop when the books make that little sense.

Should we? Because the Dr. Fullofhimself appearance is really coming across as preemptive damage control -- and no matter what the two will insist until the end of their fame time, you can't film what didn't happen.

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